Wisconsin couple has old phones and nobody to buy them
madison.com
madison.com
If they dropped the prices to between $50 and $100 they might sell as a novelty.
Just to haul it all off to the dump would cost a fair amount.
I think they need to hire a zoomer on commission to promote the phones on TikTok and shilling them away with the bluetooth adapter being free. Tie this in with a giant telephone art project to draw folks in.
Short story contest: All the phones ring at once.. but why, and who is on the other end?? Also, classic telephones are the only way to enter/exit the Matrix, so with the decline of the payphone elsewhere this guy is sitting on a type of mass-transit system.
https://archive.is/wlca5/05d66ca7461fc695941b9e7be0214d4ba72...
At this point, what they have is a liability, not an asset.
Edit: if you're getting captcha failures, it's an overhead shot of the 15+ trailers/shipping containers they store phones in.
And to provide these discussion links that sort of include a workaround:
Pleasantly surprised by the collection of unambiguously, not-cellular, vintage phones, including rotary dialers.
Electronics I just recycle and I mostly just shrug about other things or donate them.
I'm sorry you were conflicted about throwing something precious away, but those are the conflicts that life is made of.
If they listed their inventory on eBay over a period of a few years with no reserve they could easily sell everything.
I'd buy a pay phone from them today if the price was right. It's not.
I know they are old people and might not have the energy and knowledge to do it but there could be a potential solution. Maybe their grandchildren could do it...
There are obsolete electronics that would be a lot harder to sell, for example CRT TVs - but phones are basically free money.
A complication is that they have so much stock, you'd need to get (road-worthy) transportation to wherever you arranged storage accessible to you.
Maybe the collection could be parted out to multiple buyers, to make some of the higher-value lots sell more easily? For example, separate buyers for the lots of wood, candlestick, and novelty phones, then another buyer pays for right to pick over the remainder for 2 weeks, then maybe it's still worthwhile for an area scrap yard to haul away all remaining stock/trailers/fixtures for free?
Some people will see a market niche in it (existing or not), and bet some $ on that to start a little side business.
Bigger lots + whatever pricing makes it move.
Meanwhile, antique phones, typewriters, cameras, and so on are popular enough that people make replicas: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266280860021
There aren't many, and they probably have what they need already. Wouldn't hurt to reach out. They might take 10 or 20 off your hands with a generous bulk discount.
Their catalog looks like a good source for period movie props.
They had good cashflow, could blind themselves to the transition because they were so old, leaped at what used to be opportunities but now were being dumped on them as suckers - and that's how they wind up being the last holders of the fast-depreciating hot potatoes.
At this point everything they have should be offered to every museum across the country for free or a tax write off. What is left, sort through and keep 1 of everything worth keeping. The rest should probably get recycled consider there is copper and possibly other metals worth something.
There are 1000's of these kinds of scenarios across the country. Old folks who just can't let shit go.
Döstädning, Swedish art of "Death Cleaning"
https://theconversation.com/swedish-death-cleaning-how-to-de...
The website could use a little work. I actually like the old school design, but higher rez photos, re-organization (there are five different places for novelty phones! https://www.phonecoinc.com/list.asp?map=1), and removing sold out models (or at least moving them to their own section) would make using it a lot easier.
Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
"I got forty red-white-and-blue shoestrings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things?"
And Louie the King said, "Let me think for a minute, son"
Then he said, "Yes, I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61"
I would appreciate it if stories like this continue to make headlines. Let them be a warning to all our parents. No doubt this will end up being an unpleasant mess for their children to clean up.
People massively underestimate the amount of pain and discomfort it causes to have to sort out a house filled with useless stuff, ON TOP of the GREAT pain of losing a parent.
When my grandma died, 6 adults (her 3 kids and spouses) were cleaning a 50 sqm flat for a week. The amount of worthless paperwork, magazines, newspapers, tchotchkes, bank statements from 40 years ago.. clothes/towels/bed-sheets for 10 people.. unreasonable volume of stuff (she was not a hoarder per se - the flat was spotless and you could easily walk from room to room), just needing enormous cleaning/maintenance and offering zero value.
I believe we should all check out lists like "how to prepare for dying" with our elder parents. It's a bit morbid and not a fun discussion for the Sunday dinner, but hey.. business before pleasure..
Come on, show a little more love toward your grandmother.
For many people the answer to both is no.
Pile 1: Definitely keeping
Pile 2: Not sure, decide later, no pressure
Pile 3: Definitely tossing
I've had a small number of elderly people go from, "STOP TOUCHING MY STUFF! I WANT IT ALL!" to getting rid of so much, I'm sitting there trying to save some of it.
This technique starts with no requirement that anything is tossed. The owner must simply touch each thing and choose a pile. Truly, no pressure and if they choose to keep every little thing, that's their choice.
The family is clearing and bringing stuff into the inbound pile for the elderly person. It works even better if there's a grandchild around to help the sorter.
The biggest thing this does, is stop the fights over every single object that go like:
Kid: Mom, do you want to keep this?
Mom: YES
Kid: BUT WHY?! It's trash!
- 10 minutes of arguing and it goes one way or another
- repeat for each and every item in someone's home
- Everyone is exhausted and angry after an hour or two
I've seen massive family drama turn into a relatively enjoyable afternoon with Grandma sharing memories with her grandchild, while 3-4 adults clear an entire garage of stuff, almost all of which wound up going to the trash with Grandma's consent.
Or you can get asterisk and some old Cisco phones.
See the perpetually for sale, perpetually overpriced cars of Craigslist.
They just had free advertising in a newspaper. That will likely help them move quite a bit of phones.
Crazy Eddie.
https://www.phonecoinc.com/topic.asp?map=1&hhrl=home&gorl=gr...
That could actually be a fun project and shouldn't be very difficult with an ESP32. I've done some PSTN design work (although it was 20+ years ago). Maybe I'll put it on the Winter project list :-)
https://www.jsonline.com/picture-gallery/news/columnists/jim...
Note: the domain name seems like a modern day slashdot.
I picked up my vintage phones at antique shops and thrift stores though, because internet prices are too high. Unfortunately, I can't get my rotary phone to work with my ATAs, even the ones that are supposed to; it works on POTS, but local POTS runs $60/month. I'm just not that committed, also not willing to pay for a pulse to tone converter. My newer old phone has tone dialing, but only on jacks with proper polarity; I might be willing to buy one of the components they made to rectify (hah) the situation, that's missing in my phone even though the model label indicates its there.
What has changed in our society that these things are no longer valued?
A simple hypothesis would be that, over time, interest in any particular item waxes and wanes. But to me it feels like fundamental values in society have changed, and the lack of interest in these items is sympomatic.
Perhaps as we have shifted radically and quickly to hyper-capitalistism / objectivism as our truth, and in a reactionary surge we seem to ridicule everything else, there is no room now for these things.
To me they’re only moderately interesting because he had one.
My kids don’t even know what one is.
There is some revival in oil and kerosene lamps.
People collect antiques that are centuries and millennia old.
As another poster mentioned: mass production lowering cost, and newer products like LEDs replacing oil lamps.
But there's also a kind of fashion aspect. Some gear might be stuff that nobody wants today. And then it features prominently in a box-office movie hit, some people dive into it on 'the socials', and before you know it, the same items fetch crazy prizes on eBay, Etsy & co.
But you can't predict this. Storage & maintenance has an ongoing cost. And some goods never have a revival no matter how old or unique. Worthless now, worthless 20, 30, 50y from now.
You could almost say (for traders of such inventory) there's a kind of gambling aspect to it.
Are old china sets dishwasher safe? Microwave safe? I'd assume people do a lot less formal entertaining these days, and if they do, outside of a holiday, they're probably more likely to go out to eat, and have games or movies at home along with appetizers.
Outside of a non-wired cabin there's not much reason for an oil lamp. Modern LED lamps can last as long as oil lamps, and the storage space for the batteries is probably smaller than for the equivalent amount of oil. Plus there are no mantles to replace. Eventually the LED will die, but it would probably take years before that happens unless there's a defect or accident.
In the rentals I've been in, closet organizers have allowed more space than armoires, and also allow the clothes to breathe.
Some people still buy bulk salt and pepper, but the smaller canisters sold at stores that most people buy come with built in shaker tops.
Recently I lived for a bit in Paris and I noticed there are furniture and interior design shops all over the place. There are almost none left in the Bay Area.
I don't want an antique set of china, because my dishwasher will probably ruin it. I don't want silver salt and pepper shakers, because I prefer freshly ground black pepper and there are a much wider range of condiments that might go on my table. I don't want a roll-top desk, because my office is oriented around a computer rather than papers.
Like a rotary telephone, most of these objects were designed to serve the needs of people who lived very different lives to me. Unlike previous generations, I have the privilege of being able to very cheaply buy things that suit my needs, rather than having to settle for what I can afford, what I am gifted or what I inherit. If you happen to value any of those things, then you're in luck - they're available in abundance, like most things you might want to own.
Utility. Not much else.
> it feels like fundamental values in society have changed, and the lack of interest in these items is symptomatic.
Not really. I think, in this case, it's just progress marching forward. As better-functioning devices emerge, the less useful ones slowly go away. Over a century plus, the phone evolved, and an earpiece you hold one-handed or could squeeze between your shoulder and ear did in the candlestick in. Touch-tone did in rotary and cordless was eating away at corded, and then mobile phones have mostly obsoleted the landline phone completely at this point.
> shifted radically and quickly to hyper-capitalistism / objectivism as our truth
I'm not sure that is the case. Being able to have both hands free while talking was so useful; by the time I was born, a candlestick phone was almost an absurd anachronism. By the time I was in high school, almost everyone was using cordless phones with a ~200' range. By the time I left college, everyone had a phone in their pocket. And each time, the tech made life measurably better.
> in a reactionary surge we seem to ridicule everything else, there is no room now for these things.
I'm not sure that's the case. Often, obsolete things are preserved as a source of inspiration, nostalgia and sometimes humor. The image of trying to operate a candlestick phone one-handed is comical because the device was a RADICAL improvement, but implemented in a way that made it very difficult to use. My first "mobile" phone weighed nine pounds and was so big it came with a lunch-box-size duffel bag to hold the transceiver and battery. When my contract was renewed two years later, I moved on to a pocket-size phone. It worked better, had about ten times the battery life, and didn't require a duffel bag to hike it around. When I talk to people who worked with me back in the early 90s, we laugh about the bag phones. We all made a lot of business happen with them, but the next iteration made the bag phone almost so difficult it was absurd.
(Current HN headline is “Wisconsin couple has tens of old phones – and nobody to buy them”.)
...which I read as between 2 and 5 (one for each of them or landlines at one-ish for each room of their house).
Fun fact: in modern Greek a million is called "ekatommyrio", which means 100 (ekató) myriads.
But, isn't that just how it always works when you play Telephone?
I have tens of phones, well certainly more than 10, that suggest a story on e-waste for the average person.
Hah, no.